Energy News Beat
The World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank Group have announced substantial increases in funding for climate mitigation and adaptation projects.
These banks aim to become key players in supporting the green transition in Asia-Pacific and Latin America, with funding directed towards innovative climate technologies and renewable energy.
Commitments include creating regulatory frameworks to attract private investment, pausing debt repayment during climate disasters, and establishing common approaches for reporting climate results.

Several regional development banks are responding to mounting pressure to provide climate financing to support the development of the green economy of low-income regions. This year, both the Asian Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank Group announced major climate investments aimed at the growth of renewable energy capacity in developing regions of the world. This is further supported by recent efforts but the World Bank Group.

Since the first COP climate summit two years ago, COP26 held in Glasgow, development banks have been facing increasing pressure to fund green energy and tech projects in much-overlooked parts of the world. And at COP28, several announcements suggested that the banks have responded to this demand. The World Bank Group announced at the summit that it was increasing its climate target to give 45 percent of its annual financing to climate-related projects in the next fiscal year. This provides around an additional $9 billion in funding for green projects, aimed principally at climate mitigation and adaptation.

In October, The Asian Development Bank (ADB) announced it planned to lend an additional $100 billion over the next 10 years. It expects to lend around $36 billion a year, marking a 40 percent increase in lending. In 2022, the ADB lent an estimated $20.5 billion for climate-related development. The bank’s plan to “relax” rules on loans is not expected to affect its AAA credit rating. Woochong Um, managing director general at ADB, stated “We looked at it and without jeopardizing our AAA we can optimize our capital adequacy framework, and be able to raise more resources to lend to the countries.” He added, “The development needs are huge and we need to make sure that we are equipped to provide financing.”

While the ADB’s lending will continue to be centred around poverty, it hopes to boost the amount of financing it provides for climate work. The ADB said that it hopes to become the climate bank of Asia and the Pacific by increasing its spending on mitigation, adaptation, and climate resilience. Significant funding will go towards new climate-related technologies and exploring cleaner transportation and weather-resistant crops. It believes that this funding goes hand in hand with the bank’s aims to alleviate poverty in the region. To attract more private funding, the ADB plans to support the creation of regulatory frameworks in countries across the region, to reduce risk and make the investment environment more attractive.

Around a month later, the Inter-American Development Bank Group (IDB Group) announced an increase in funding to Latin America and the Caribbean to $150 billion over the next decade. This would help the bank achieve three times the amount of financing it had previously earmarked for climate projects, putting it on track to meet the G20’s recommendation. The President of the IDB, Ilan Goldfajn, stated “We are placing action on climate and nature at the centre of the IDB Group… This means increasing direct and mobilized climate financing for Latin America and the Caribbean, expanding our work on global public goods, such as the Amazon, catalysing private-sector engagement and developing new financial instruments so we can mobilize more capital toward climate action.”

The IDB is the main source of long-term development financing in the region and is committed to meeting its climate mitigation and adaptation goals. The Latin America and the Caribbean region is home to the Amazon rainforest, which is one of the world’s primary carbon sinks, as well as vast green energy resources. With greater financing, the region could be propelled to become a major green energy and tech hub, helping to alleviate the burden of climate change and supporting a global green transition.

Five multinational development banks (MDBs) have now pledged to include clauses in their agreements and contracts to pause debt repayment in the case of a climate disaster, following pressure from international bodies and governments. Further, MDBs recently released a joint statement stating their commitment to establishing a common approach for reporting climate results. This will be achieved through country-level cooperation to harmonise climate indicators. They will also develop a programme to be provided via the World Bank to support countries in the development of long-term climate and development strategies and to attract private climate funding. EIB President Werner Hoyer said in a statement “This joint statement from the world’s multilateral development banks makes it clear that we have heard the calls to step up and that we have the means to deliver. Crucially, we have agreed to further strengthen our cooperation to support countries and the private sector to accelerate a green and just transition and build resilience.”

In response to mounting pressure from state governments and other official actors, several development banks have announced an increase in climate funding, aimed mainly at climate mitigation and adaptation. This funding is expected to help greater private funding to low-income regions that could be key to achieving a global green transition. Investments in green energy and technologies are also expected to spur economic growth at the national level for several countries around the globe.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

Real Estate Investor Pulse

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News 
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post Global Banks Pledge Massive Investments in Sustainable Projects appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

ESG funds operating in Europe are facing a forced divestment from oil and gas companies under new French regulations.

Per the new regime, ESG funds that want to earn the official French label of “socially responsible” investing, will be banned from holding stocks in oil and gas companies engaged in new exploration and production.

Since there is virtually no oil and gas company that does not engage in new exploration and production, the new rules would mean divestment, the Financial Times reports, citing sources from the financial industry.

What’s more, since ESG funds operate across borders in Europe, French-based ones will not be the only ones affected by the new rules.

“It is fair to assume that virtually every company focused on oil and gas exploration, production and refining is continuously looking to expand its oil and gas activities,” Hortense Bioy, Morningstar’s global director of sustainability research, told the FT.

“Investors would be hard-pressed to find an oil and gas company that doesn’t plan to replace its declining production from old fields by developing new fields, be they on the oil side or the gas side,” Bioy added.

Meanwhile, a senior executive from Deutsche Bank recently told Reuters that oil and gas stocks should be included in all ESG investment funds, to provide much-needed stability and predictability.

“When we think about clean energy, these are business models which are quite new and sensitive to interest rates,” Markus Mueller, Deutsche’s chief investment officer ESG, told Reuters. “Investors are looking for traditional [energy] companies that have capex in renewables… They prefer the transition than to exclusions.”

Mueller was probably referring to the recent market crash in wind and solar stocks that got pummeled by higher interest rates unlike oil and gas stocks thanks to the latter’s strong cash position.

Per the FT, funds that currently have the French sustainable investment label hold some 7 billion euro in oil and gas stocks.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

1031 Exchange E-Book https://alternativeinvestments.sandstone-group.com/en-us/tax-benefits-sandstone-group-0-1-1-0

ENB Top News https://energynewsbeat.co/top-news/

ENB https://energynewsbeat.co/

Energy Dashboard https://app.sandstone-group.com/enb-dashboard-version-2

ENB Podcast https://energynewsbeat.co/industry-insights-2/

 

The post European Funds Face Forced Oil, Gas Divestment appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

ENB Pub Note: Excellent Summary from Watt-Logic. I would add some wild items happening in the global oil and gas markets. OPEC, and OPEC + have had a major loss of control over the oil pricing market. The weaponization of the US Dollar against the world has opened the “Dark or Ghost Fleet”, accelerated the move away from the petrodollar and changed all of the global financial models around energy. With countries trading energy in their own currencies, the OPEC and sanctions are simply “Mind over Matter” as Putin would say. “I don’t mind because the US and Biden don’t matter.”

The past couple of years have been dominated by concerns over energy prices, particularly gas. However, gas prices have fallen significantly from their highs of summer 2022, and while they are still double the long-term average prior to autumn 2021, they are probably going to remain at broadly this level for some time. Significant further reductions seem unlikely at this time, and while there may be seasonal reductions, the market looks to have found a new level, at least until new LNG supplies come onstream in 2026. The risks are more that the market will tighten in the meantime, pushing prices higher, or that geopolitical risks crystalise, affecting supplies.

This means that absent a new supply pushing prices higher, outright gas and electricity prices are unlikely to have the same high profile that they had over the past two years, although other aspects of energy pricing are likely to be in focus, as I describe below.

Re-assessing energy economics

This has started in 2023. The failure of so many wind tenders and the need to reduce expensive energy subsidies are likely to drive further thinking into energy economics. Whether that is positive or not remains to be seen – policy-makers struggle to let go of favoured narratives (renewables are cheap) and in some EU countries, subsidies are welcomed more warmly than in others. Subsidies are necessary to stimulate immature markets, but should be phased out once those markets reach maturity. That has manifestly not happened in the wind sector – indeed, subsidies are increasing despite a quarter of a century of market stimulation.

Policy-makers are recognising that one way out of this difficulty is to reduce demand, and there continue to be half-hearted attempts to reduce energy waste in the built environment. However, this is a hard-to-solve problem and there’s no real prospect of any country really seizing on the challenge at a time when budgets are constrained.

Governments want to make energy cheaper, but are failing to recognise that their own policies are making energy more expensive. Energy systems built on intermittent renewables are certain to be more expensive than those based on more reliable technologies, for the simple reason that double the amount of capacity will need to be built in order to ensure security of supply. It ought to be self-evident that this is the case, irrespective of the short-run marginal operating costs of wind and solar. In addition to extra capacity, whether that is in the form of generation or storage, additional grid infrastructure is needed to connect all of this capacity, and balancing costs rise when both supply and demand become highly variable. It’s past time that policy-makers recognised these realities, and it is to be hope that the failed wind tenders and turbine-maker losses of 2023 will be a catalyst for this re-evaluation.

The UK Government has said it is updating its LCOE framework – I challenged the Secretary of State at a recent Policy Exchange event to make it fully cost comparative, including de-commissioning costs for all technologies. I sense that there is a growing understanding that current metrics are not working – even Lazard has expanded its LCOE to include some measure of firmness – but whether these will go far enough remains to be seen. I suspect 2024 will be the start but the steps will be small.

Focus on supply chains

In 2023 we started to be aware that the delivery of net zero ambitions would require huge amounts of resources: financial, human and material. And that access to those materials may not be straight-forward. In 2023, the increased costs of materials had a significant impact on the cost of new generation, particularly in the renewables sector, but across the energy value chain there will be a huge increase in the amounts of minerals required.

According to the IEA, an offshore wind turbine requires nine times more minerals than a comparable gas-fired power plant, and an EV uses six times more critical minerals than an ICE vehicle. It’s not just power grids that require large amounts of copper – wind, solar hydro and geothermal generation all rely on copper as well as nickel, silver and rare earths. Nuclear power plants depend on uranium for fuel, while nickel alloys are a key component in their cooling systems as well as being used inside the pressure vessel. EVs rely on a range of critical minerals for battery components, and also require rare earths for motor design and copper for wiring.

Far and away the largest source of new mineral demand will come from grid infrastructure, such as power lines and transformers. Taken together, the need for critical minerals will double between 2020 and 2040 based on the stated policies of governments, and quadruple in the IEA’s Sustainable Development Scenario. In both scenarios, EVs and battery storage account for about half of the mineral demand growth from clean energy technologies over the next two decades – mineral demand from EVs and batteries is predicted to grow tenfold in the Stated Policy Scenario and over 30 times in the Sustainable Development Scenario by 2040. By weight, mineral demand in 2040 is expected to be dominated by graphite, copper and nickel, with lithium experiencing the fastest growth rate – increasing by over 40 times in the Sustainable Development Scenario. The shift towards lower cobalt chemistries for batteries will limit growth in cobalt demand, as it is displaced by nickel.

A lot more mining is going to be needed to deliver these requirements, but with a 20-year lead time for opening a new copper mine, this is a non-trivial challenge. I will be addressing this topic in a series of upcoming posts, highlighting the scale of the issue.

Hydrogen crunch time

The time for making decisions on hydrogen is rapidly approaching. The approach taken varies across different countries, with some countries pursuing a vision of nationwide and even international hydrogen pipelines while others expect local industrial clusters to be more likely. Hydrogen pipelines seem more like a pipe dream once the physics of hydrogen are taken into account, and the huge losses incurred simply moving the gas around in a pipeline system. EU hydrogen targets already look set to be missed, with investment for these projects thin on the ground as the Inflation Reduction Act sucks capital into US projects.

The governments of Germany, France and Denmark have the highest ambitions for 2030, however, as this article states, ambitions and targets do not necessarily translate into meaningful action with very few projects reaching Final Investment Decisions. These will need to come in 2024 if 2030 targets have any hope of being met. As things stand, the business case for clean hydrogen is far from clear, with the economics of fossil fuels remaining better in most if not all cases. Of course this means that subsidies will be necessary, but how much money is available for yet more subsidies in already fiscally constrained countries remains to be seen.

Hydrogen for heat, particularly in the domestic sector, suffered a blow in the UK with both local hydrogen trials having been cancelled due to public opposition to the schemes. Hydrogen for high temperature industrial heating applications probably does make sense, but there are questions about how it can be produced. While the current narrative is all about using surplus renewable generation, this is unlikely to be practical in many cases – the use of small nuclear reactors would make more sense, but those won’t be deployed until well into the 2030s.

All of which makes me believe that the 2030s are the sensible timeframe for the emergence of any kind of hydrogen economy. But 2030 is rapidly approaching, so the plans and investment decisions will need to start being made if these projects are to be realised. The next couple or years will be crucial if hydrogen is to emerge as a real piece of the de-carbonisation solution, or remain a niche application.

Nuclear renaissance continues

The renewed interest in nuclear power is likely to continue into 2024 with more countries announcing more new projects. The main challenges will be delivering both these projects and the uranium to fuel them, with supply chain constraints and lack of skilled workers in various parts of the industry being significant limiting factors. We are also likely to see more countries delaying the closure of legacy reactors, the re-opening of more shuttered reactors in Japan, and, depending on the success of Holtec’s bid to re-open Palisades, attempts to re-open other closed reactors elsewhere (providing that progress on de-commissioning was limited).

However, progress on small modular reactors is unlikely to be significant in 2024. Some projects continue to move forward and perhaps we may see some further design certifications, but nothing in the West is close to being built.

With the first EPRs and AP-1000s now open, there may be pressure to build more, however France is already looking to the next generation EPR2. KEPCO’s APR-1400, with its seventh and eighth reactors soon to open, is far in the lead, and the smart money would be on the Koreans teaming up with other countries for the wider deployment of its technology. Its eight-year build time and established supply chains are also highly attractive, and buyers would do well to contract multiple units with local workforce training by Korean experts being part of the package.

New nuclear projects may also benefit from some revision of energy economics. An all-in technology comparison including de-commissioning costs is likely to favour nuclear above renewable generation. However, onerous regulatory regimes continue to stifle the development of the market. Governments should push for greater trusted country regulatory collaboration in 2024 to facilitate the smoother development of future nuclear pipelines.

Security of supply will remain on the agenda

Concerns over security of supply are here to stay, and have several dimensions. Access to fuel in respect of geo-political risks is now in focus, along with an increased awareness of infrastructure vulnerabilities after an attack this year on the Balticconnector pipe between Finland and Estonia. Countries should develop better infrastructure monitoring and emergency plans in the event of disruption to key infrastructure.

The impact of energy policy on security of supply is also not going away, particularly in the US, where the issues appear to be more acute than in Europe. However, the UK faces similar challenges, and is likely to face a supply crunch as this decade progresses. Indeed, unless something changes, we will face periods with no nuclear power on the GB system by the end of the decade since Hinkley Point C is now unlikely to open before 2030. With all the AGRs due to close by March 2028, only Sizewell B would be left, and it cannot run indefinitely without maintenance and re-fuelling outages.

The increased reliance on intermittent renewables creates real security of supply risks in the absence of long duration storage, and since such storage (with the exception of hydro, which cannot be deployed everywhere) has yet to be invented, many countries face similar threats. The use of interconnectors to mitigate these risks will likely prove of limited benefit since the connected markets are likely to share similar weather and similar energy mixes. The US is building more gas fired generation to deal with this risk – other countries, particularly the UK are likely to have to follow suit.

.

Source: Watt-Logic

1031 Exchange E-Book https://alternativeinvestments.sandstone-group.com/en-us/tax-benefits-sandstone-group-0-1-1-0

ENB Top News https://energynewsbeat.co/top-news/

ENB https://energynewsbeat.co/

Energy Dashboard https://app.sandstone-group.com/enb-dashboard-version-2

ENB Podcast https://energynewsbeat.co/industry-insights-2/

ENB Substack: https://[email protected]

The post Energy market outlook – what can we expect in 2024? – Watt-Logic appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

A very funny meme targeting the energy transition and the authoritarians pushing it circulated across social media over the Christmas weekend. The meme features a young woman with European features who one could easily imagine chairing a propaganda session at the just-concluded COP28 or next month’s annual World Economic Forum conference, holding out her hands as if to ward off an assault and saying, “Calm down. We’re only doing fascism until we solve climate change.”

Unfortunately, as is the case with any good parody humor, the meme is only funny because it is so tellingly accurate. To see how accurate it really is, all one must do is pay attention to what the energy transition movement’s most prominent advocates say in their public pronouncements.

Take Biden Climate Envoy John Kerry as a prime example. As I pointed out in a recent piece here, Mr. Kerry was neither elected nor formally confirmed by the U.S. Senate to his ornamental position, and thus has no real authority to commit the United States to any international agreement. Yet, during COP28, Kerry announced he had committed the US government to become a signatory to a multi-national deal to ban unabated coal-fired power plants. That’s an authoritarian edict, plain and simple.

Alex Epstein, author the book “Fossil Future,” took it further, referring to Kerry as a “fascist” in an interview with SkyNews. “This guy’s a fascist,” Epstein said. “He’s basically saying, ‘I should have total control over the economy. So, if I don’t like coal plants, I get to shut down coal plants.’ That itself is terrifying, that on climate grounds, you can just shut down any industry you want.”

He isn’t wrong – it is terrifying, especially when, as Epstein further points out, Kerry and other disciples of climate alarmism are working to tear down reliable, baseload, 24/7 coal plants at the same time they are working to overload the power grid with millions more electric vehicles and millions new all-electric homes. The net result is grid managers all over the country now warning of mounting grid reliability issues as they run dangerously short of baseload generation capacity.

Take Biden Climate Envoy John Kerry as a prime example. As I pointed out in a recent piece here, Mr. Kerry was neither elected nor formally confirmed by the U.S. Senate to his ornamental position, and thus has no real authority to commit the United States to any international agreement. Yet, during COP28, Kerry announced he had committed the US government to become a signatory to a multi-national deal to ban unabated coal-fired power plants. That’s an authoritarian edict, plain and simple.

Alex Epstein, author the book “Fossil Future,” took it further, referring to Kerry as a “fascist” in an interview with SkyNews. “This guy’s a fascist,” Epstein said. “He’s basically saying, ‘I should have total control over the economy. So, if I don’t like coal plants, I get to shut down coal plants.’ That itself is terrifying, that on climate grounds, you can just shut down any industry you want.”

He isn’t wrong – it is terrifying, especially when, as Epstein further points out, Kerry and other disciples of climate alarmism are working to tear down reliable, baseload, 24/7 coal plants at the same time they are working to overload the power grid with millions more electric vehicles and millions new all-electric homes. The net result is grid managers all over the country now warning of mounting grid reliability issues as they run dangerously short of baseload generation capacity.

So, basically, Gates is saying that renewables and EVs – the chosen rent-seeking technologies of this energy transition – must “outcompete fossil fuels,” but in his next breath he states that the playing field must be wildly tilted by government so that no real competition takes place. In Gates’s view, that would be achieved through a steadily-rising carbon tax that would ostensibly be levied on fossil fuels, but which we all know by now would ultimately be borne by ordinary citizens in the form of rapidly rising costs for all forms of energy. There is no mystery here, and this is authoritarianism in a nutshell.

Bill Gates: We have to outcompete fossil fuels. Now, to do that properly, they shouldn’t get subsidies and in fact carbon tax over time should be put on, so the new, say the electric car, or the plane use hydrogen, the fact that it doesn’t emit carbon you’re helping it get… pic.twitter.com/s2V52PcsNP

— Camus (@newstart_2024) December 23, 2023

Then, of course, there is Al Gore. Gore was given a shamelessly softball interview setup by CNN host Jake Tapper Sunday. Tapper, who appeared to be reading from a script, obligingly set up Gore to recite his favorite alarmist talking points on climate change and what he believes must be done.

“Well, we still have the ability to seize control of our destiny,” Gore told Tapper. “We can do this if we just overcome the greed and political power of the big fossil fuel polluters who’ve been trying to control this process. We need to break through this blockade that the big oil companies and petrostates have been using to block progress.” Honestly, what world does this man live in?

Authoritarians are truly on the march, but don’t worry, folks, they’ll stop assaulting your freedoms just as soon as they fix climate change. If you can’t trust Al Gore, Bill Gates, and John Kerry, well, who can you trust?

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

Source: The Daily Caller

David’s Substack – Please follow and Subscribe (Tell him Stu sent you): https://blackmon.substack.com/ –

Real Estate Investor Pulse

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News 
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post DAVID BLACKMON: The Climate Fascists Are On The March appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

China EV makers Li Auto, Nio and XPeng will report deliveries on Jan. 1. BYD should overtake Tesla in fully electric vehicles as of Q4.
The post Tesla Rival BYD Set To Seize Electric Vehicle Crown; China’s Li Auto, Nio, XPeng On Tap Too appeared first on Investor’s Business Daily.

Li Auto, XPeng and Nio will report deliveries on Monday, Jan. 1. BYD will report Monday or Tuesday. Tesla will report deliveries on or around Tuesday, Jan. 2. The deliveries data comes as the China EV price war continues to intensify.

BYD Sales

BYD needs to sell 316,626 EVs in December to hit its 2023 target of 3 million electric vehicles, including plug-in hybrids. That would be up from November’s record 301,903. BYD has ramped up discounts to hit its goal amid the fierce EV price war.

BYD sales of fully battery electric vehicles (BEVs) should top 500,000 in the fourth quarter. That would be enough to overtake Tesla for the first time.

BYD’s China insurance registrations were at 180,000 in December through Christmas Eve, including 63,900 in the latest week. That doesn’t include significant overseas sales. It also doesn’t include sales of BYD’s premium brands. Its Denza brand had 2,300 deliveries in the latest week. The new F-brand Bao 5 had 1,300 weekly deliveries while the superpremium YangWang U8 hit 400 registrations, both ramping up.

Li Auto Deliveries

Li Auto has said it could challenge 50,000 deliveries in December, up from a record 41,300 in November. Through Dec. 24, Li Auto sold 36,400 extended-range vehicles, essentially plug-in hybrids.

On Dec. 31, Li Auto pushed back the official launch of its first all-electric vehicle, the high-end Mega minivan to March 1 from December. Deliveries are now set to start in early March.

XPeng Deliveries

XPeng deliveries just topped 20,000 vehicles in October and November, but it may struggle to hit that mark in December. Registrations were at 12,500 through Dec. 24, with the figure tumbling 18.75% in the latest week to 3,900. XPeng does have modest deliveries in Europe.

On Dec. 31, XPeng said its X9 minivan has received over 30,000 pre-orders and will officially launch on Jan. 1, with deliveries starting in January.

Nio Deliveries

Nio has guided for 47,000-49,000 deliveries in Q4, implying 14,967-16,967 for December. Its insurance registrations were at 12,000 through Dec. 24, including a solid bounce to 4,100 in the latest week.

The Tesla rival sold 15,959 in November, a fourth straight monthly decline.

Tesla Deliveries

Tesla must deliver almost 476,000 EVs in Q4 to reach its full-year delivery target of 1.8 million. Analysts expect about 480,000 deliveries, largely due to strong Tesla China sales. Tesla weekly registrations were a hefty 18,500 in the week ended Dec. 24, up slightly from 18,300 in the week before. The EV giant has delivered 60,200 in China this month, according to registration data.

EV Stocks

BYD stock rose 4.6% to 27.68 in the final week of 2023, but after hitting a nine-month low of 24.95 on Dec. 22.

Li Auto stock surged 12.7% to 37.43 in the latest week, reclaiming the 200-day and 50-day lines. Shares have a 47.33 consolidation buy point. But LI stock has a trendline entry around 40 and a short-term high of 42.35 as another early buy area.

XPEV stock jumped 5.65% for the week to 14.59, rebounding from the 200-day line after four straight weekly declines. XPeng stock is still below its 50-day line.

NIO stock has popped 7.7% to 9.07, its fourth straight weekly gain after nearly hitting a three-year low. Shares are hitting resistance around the 200-day line.

Tesla stock fell 1.6% to 248.48 for the week, pulling back to the 21-day line on Friday. Thursday’s high of 265.13 offers a buy point from a shallow weekly handle on a double-bottom base.

Please follow Ed Carson on X/Twitter at @IBD_ECarson, Threads at @edcarson1971 and Bluesky at @edcarson.bsky.social for stock market updates and more.

Source: Investors Business Daily

Real Estate Investor Pulse

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News 
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post Tesla Rival BYD Set To Seize Electric Vehicle Crown; China’s Li Auto, Nio, XPeng On Tap Too appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

The trend should continue once Cairo finalizes a free trade deal with the Eurasian Economic Union, Aleksey Tevanyan says

 

The post Egypt-Russia trade soaring – official appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

The Biden Administration is cracking down on more household appliances in its latest effort to push its radical climate change agenda.

On Friday, the Department of Energy (DOE) finalized a slew of new energy efficiency standards for residential refrigerators and freezers and proposed standards for commercial fans and blowers.

The agency claimed that limiting these everyday appliances would eliminate roughly 420 million metric tons of “dangerous carbon dioxide emissions” over the next three decades, saving households and businesses $5 billion a year on utility bills.

“Today’s announcement is a testament to the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to lowering utility costs for working families, which is helping to simultaneously strengthen energy independence and combat the climate crisis,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said.

This is the Biden Administration’s latest move intended to phase out fossil fuel-powered appliances and instead often replace them with electric versions.

According to the DOE, compliance with the finalized fridge and freezer standards will be required starting in either 2029 or 2030. The regulations “follow the lead” from versions already in place in California.

The standards targeting fans and blowers will be the first of its kind. The agency claims this will cut carbon dioxide emissions by 318 million metric tons in the next 30 years.

The new regulations will come with a hefty price tag for Americans— who, thanks to President Joe Biden, can barely afford to pay bills due to record-breaking inflation, let alone replace their home appliances.

Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Fox News Digital that the new efficiency standards could harm product performance, saying that the new dishwasher standards have led to cycles taking as much as twice as long to finish.

He also criticized the Biden Administration for not allowing Americans to make these choices independently.

“Consumers are perfectly capable of making these decisions on their own, including consumers who want to buy extra efficient refrigerators or other models,” he said. “What these standards do is they force that choice on everyone, whether it makes sense for them or not. And we know from history that, in some cases, these standards raise the upfront cost more than you’re likely to earn back in the form of energy savings.”

The post Biden Admin Targets Fridges, Freezers In Latest Slew of Appliance Crackdown appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

If each side’s respective drills go off without a hitch, then they can spin it as though the other backed down, which can further galvanize their public in support of the state and its policy towards the Essequibo dispute.

The dispatch of a British offshore patrol vessel to Guyana for bilateral drills amidst its former colony’s newly heated territorial dispute with Venezuela prompted the latter to respond by ordering its own such drills. Some observers worried that this could undermine the agreement from earlier this month to resolve their feud over Essequibo through purely peaceful means, but the fact of the matter is that both side’s soft power interests are cynically served through these tit-for-tat drills.

Guyana presumably requested the UK to redirect its nearby vessel in the region for impromptu drills in the aftermath of Venezuela’s referendum on their disputed region in order to show that it has the tangible military support of two major countries for its claims after its recent air drills with the US. The UK happily complied because it always supports the US out of principle, plus London wants to present itself as a global power despite the decline of its worldwide influence after Brexit.

As for Venezuela, while it would prefer that neither the US nor the UK carried out any drills with Guyana in Essequibo (including the region’s offshore territory), its muscular response to the second of those two suggests that Caracas doesn’t expect London to escalate at the level that Washington could have. If each side’s respective drills go off without a hitch, then they can spin it as though the other backed down, which can further galvanize their public in support of the state and its policy towards this dispute.

Guyana can claim that Venezuela was deterred from any speculatively secret military campaign in Essequibo, which the UK can claim partial credit for as supposed proof of its restored global influence, while Venezuela can say that it deterred them from a supposedly secret military provocation against it. The first’s public would feel more confident with their claims, the second’s would be more inclined to believe in the post-Brexit vision of “Global Britain”, while the third’s would rally more around Maduro.

Each of these are important goals since tiny Guyana would struggle to fend off much larger Venezuela on its own if those two came to blows, the British public remains divided over their country’s foreign policy, while Maduro is preparing for elections sometime next year. These soft power imperatives suggest that more such tit-for-tat drills can be expected, and Venezuela might be searching for a major country partner whose participation it can present as support for its claims like Guyana has with the US and UK’s.

Thus far, however, no country anywhere in the world has come out in support for Caracas. Both the Chinese and Russian Foreign Ministry spokespeople reaffirmed their country’s support for a peaceful resolution to this dispute, and they conspicuously didn’t lend any credence to Venezuela’s claims. This is a pragmatic stance from their perspective since they can’t meaningfully support their partner in any war over Essequibo for simple geographical-logistical reasons even if they wanted to (which they don’t).

Nevertheless, even if Venezuela only continues carrying out its own drills in response to the ones that Guyana organizes with whoever else, it’ll still reap the soft power dividends of these tit-for-tat dynamics. The optics of increasingly frequent drills in and around Essequibo could contribute to concerns about the region’s militarization, however, thus leading to worries that its two claimants’ security dilemma is spiraling out of control. Both must therefore be careful not to cause a war by miscalculation.

Source: Andrew Korybko’s News Letter

Real Estate Investor Pulse

1031 Exchange E-Book

ENB Top News 
ENB
Energy Dashboard
ENB Podcast
ENB Substack

The post The Tit-For-Tat British-Guyanese & Venezuelan Drills Serve Each Side’s Soft Power Interests appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

The post Energy market review of 2023 appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

LinkedIn is fun for getting to know other people and energy industry leaders. Ralph Rodriquez is a perfect example. He had never been on a podcast, and we had an absolute blast.

And anytime you can develop several T-shirt slogans, you know it will be a fun podcast. If we can’t make fun of ourselves and the Energy Transition, we can’t enjoy trying to solve global energy poverty. Like one T-Shirt: “Does this Carbon Footprint make my As# Look Big?”.

Please follow Ralph on his LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/energyninja/

*Please note his LinkedIn URL: energyninja. I should have realized I was being set up for a fun interview.

00:00 – Intro

02:53 – Legend Energy Advisors Ralph Rodriguez, discusses transparency in wholesale energy markets and shares a success story of a Texas mining operation’s profits during market volatility.

05:49 – Importance of data in managing labor and energy costs, achieving a 30% energy cost reduction in a NYC building, and providing real-time carbon footprint data.

11:15 – Addressing energy efficiency amidst upcoming carbon taxes, advocating for businesses to engage in discussions and implement strategies to reduce carbon footprints.

15:44 – Humor, authenticity, and proactive engagement in addressing regulatory challenges, emphasizing the need for businesses to track and reduce carbon footprints.

20:40 – Navigating LinkedIn challenges, discussing AI’s evolving role in software platforms, and highlighting real-time energy analytics in diverse industries.

25:35 – Challenges of energy management amid increasing power demands, rising costs, and potential blackouts, stressing the importance of real-time energy analytics.

32:48 – Increasing focus on data centers and commercial real estate in Q4, emphasizing integrated solutions for minimizing environmental footprints and teasing the idea of T-shirt entrepreneurship.

35:09 – Outro

Give us your thoughts on the T-shirt design – We had others that the staff put together but HR canned them.

 

 

Stuart   Turley [00:00:03] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Energy News Beat podcast. My name’s Stu Turley, president CEO of the Sandstone Group. We got some serious energy problems in the United States. There’s a couple of other ways that we can save it. We can either lower the price of energy or we can have a little bit of better management and actually reduce what we use. And better yet, how do you know if you’re even using what how do you reduce what you don’t know? I’ve got a special guest here. I’ve got Ralph Rodrigues, and he is over at Legend Energy Advisors. And we’ve been chit chat and a little bit of inside baseball about Ralph. Ralph and I have been beating each other up on LinkedIn and that’s how we met. I want to give a shout out to LinkedIn and Ralph for putting up with me on LinkedIn because we’ve had fun poking at each other and we’ve also been talking about his black belt in Jiu Jitsu jujitsu, and that’s my Texas Oklahoma accent coming out. And we have had an absolute blast talking about my black belt in Taekwondo and how badly I got beat up. Well, Ralph, thank you for stopping by the podcast.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:01:24] And Stu, thanks so much for having me. I sincerely appreciate the opportunity and and look forward to having this discussion. And hopefully you all beat me up with your taekwondo over the, the, the airways here.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:01:39] Oh, I got so beat up. You know, we never had any discipline problems in my house because my son and my daughter both just went ballistic on it. And my son, when he hit 16, just would be the snot and I would crack. When I got out of bed the next morning and my wife would lean over and she goes, He beat you up again. Did Ning and I. Yeah, he did. So I my son, if you’re listening. Oh, you know how to hurt me.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:02:13] Well, it’s kind of. It’s kind of disgusting that that the older you get you sometimes the stories of how you hurt or how you got hurt don’t really. They’re not as exciting. You know, it’s kind of like, hey, I rolled out of bed this morning, you know what I mean? And somehow I ended up with a crack in my neck, you know?

 

Stuart   Turley [00:02:31] Oh, yeah. And I, you know, you and I were talking about being married, and I’ve been married 37 years, and I believing she has got a 37 years. One of those was a good year. But you also had a few things about being married. Men understand this, but we also don’t understand turning the lights out. Ralph And we’re sitting here and you tell us a little bit about what you do because you got a weird company that is really involved in all types of energy. Tell us what you got going on over there.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:03:05] Yeah, so so interestingly enough, Legend Energy Advisors founder and CEO Dan Crosby used to work for, you know, he used to manage national accounts actually for one of the largest brokerage houses in the country. And he had challenges. You know, he would need to talk to people, you know, his clients, and they’d reach out to him and they’d say, man, my bill, you know, it’s like twice as much as it was, you know, the month before what happened. And he’d look at him and say, Well, you use twice as much energy. And, you know, obviously they were like, not satisfied with that answer. Neither was Dan. He really struggled with that and later decided that, you know, that space was really challenging because those people are not really there to help them understand how they’re using or metabolizing energy. Right. And so it it was an, you know, an interesting transition for him because he he wanted to to really kind of help them understand how they were using that energy. And the only way to do that is by having complete transparency in the wholesale energy markets, you know, and understanding how they’re using that energy.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:04:19] Right. And so when you get your bill and you don’t realize that $2 was your hot water heater and then, you know, or $1.95, and then all of a sudden in Texas, was it two years ago, the thousand dollars a kilowatt hour or whatever it was.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:04:37] As you say, it’s insane, right? I mean, the the mark I mean, whenever those challenges come, there’s people that still got to keep cranking their businesses. And so some people are taking advantage of that. And it’s the ones that are actively participating in the energy markets. And they can really only do that by, you know, by operating in real time, you know, And so so we’ve had some clients actually, which was into. Fittingly enough that you mention that we have we had a mining client in in Texas that was one of the was the only operational mine during that time and literally just made millions of dollars just in a couple of days.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:05:20] Yeah. How do you put that one by your wife? Hello, honey. Our bill went to, you know, $20,000. Oops.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:05:28] You don’t. You don’t. You don’t.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:05:33] But both you and I, we get our head shoveled in the back of a head so hard our eyeballs would fall out. Absolutely. Absolutely. And but now when we sit back and take a look at your software that you have the balance out and track the information. We were talking about data and as a CEO, if you’re trying to run a company and you got to look out for labor and energy, are some of your biggest costs that you have to try to manage as a, you know, type of a business owner. So what can you guys do as far as what are your thoughts on how to you don’t know what you’re going to save if you don’t know what how to do it. I mean. Right.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:06:16] Exactly. It’s like you don’t know. It’s like that old question. You don’t know what you don’t know. So it’s like, you know, but but then you have to convince somebody to take the step to try to understand what you don’t know. And sometimes bridging that gap is really challenging. Right? But but the key is really an understanding that there’s three components that when they work together, really makes the ability for decision makers to understand how they’re using energy and how to how to improve efficiency. Because really, at the end of the day. Whether you’re trying to save the environment or whether your goal is to save money. Efficiency is really the driver for both of those items, right? So so the key is in those three components is, is having a, you know, an advisor that does market intelligence, that understands and has the highest level market intelligence, but can apply that with the type of analytics platform like like our legend analytics platform, which aggregates and, you know, and extrapolates the data seamlessly. And and it’s actually auditable data, but then also understanding the infrastructure component. Because when you work all those three things together, you can optimize the efficiency and it just really improves how you’re operating as a business. And, and you know, we’re doing some really, really interesting things where we’re helping people in some ways that are really, really significant.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:07:47] Give us a few examples.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:07:49] Yeah. So, so one of our clients in New York City is a 60 story building. And, you know, we we started implementing our platform and and our technology and the expertise within our organization because those three silos actually have different people that had. Oh, yes. And so their ability to dynamically work together to, to to kind of integrate those solutions to understand is really improved efficiency in ways that are like incredible. I mean, that building is, is some 30%. You know, they spend some 30% less on their energy bills than they did previously. And one of the cool things is that because because we do real time analytics is, is they’re able to actually have a real time are their clients or are able to have a real time carbon footprint.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:08:47] Wow.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:08:48] Their product, which is something that’s really different. I mean, we do that in hotels too, where we’re a client, you know, when they’re on their way out, you know, they can get their statement and it gives them the carbon footprint right there, which is something that’s really different.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:09:03] Oh, man, that is extremely different. And when you sit back and kind of think as a CEO, you’re responsible to your investors and your stakeholders and you’re sitting here and you’ve got new things coming around the corner. If you don’t have auditable information, you could be in trouble. And that’s one of the things that bothers me about the tax, the excuse me, the carbon tax. Regulatory regulatory issues coming around the corner is you you almost have to look at your data as a defense shield because if you don’t have the data, it’s kind of like the IRS showing up at your doorstep. You almost have to prove that you’re innocent.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:09:49] Yeah. So take it one step further and I can tell you that that we’ve had experience because we engage with really, you know, a lot of energy, intense businesses across almost every sector, including oil and gas, by the way. I mean, some of our clients are some of the largest oil and gas companies in North America. And and we can tell you specifically that there’s a significant amount of of overreporting and underreporting. And so that’s really, you know, by virtue of of using like Excel Excel spreadsheets to, you know, to input your data. And it just requires manpower. It’s prone to error. And in the age of AI, it’s like, man, you really got to advance, you know, to the next level. And so, you know, I feel fortunate that I’m a part of Legend Energy Advisors because, you know, our founder and CEO is is really and truly a visionary. I mean, he’s so far ahead of every, you know, in his thought process and and the solutions. And, you know, it makes it easy for me, you know, as a business development sales type person, when you have a product and services that are solving real world problems. Man Yeah, there’s no better feeling than that. It’s it’s an easy sale. The hardest part for me is just getting the meetings, you know.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:11:15] I’m yeah, I can understand that. It’s all about thought leadership and people want to buy from somebody that they won’t they know and that you’re not trying to sell them a bit bill of goods, but when you’re trying to save them money and protect them from the government, as far as the carbon taxes that are coming on and everything else that’s really not selling, that’s saving your clients, that’s kind of cool.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:11:38] Yeah, it really is. And a lot of people don’t really understand. I mean, there’s there’s some are they haven’t really resonated with the idea yet. But like local law 97 in New York, you know that law is actually I mean it’s you know it’s common. And so there’s significant penalties for your carbon footprint, you know, like, you know, for your reporting initiatives and whatnot. If you’re not reducing those carbon footprint, you’re going to pay. And so the question is, is do you go ahead and suck it up and try to pay earlier and start developing some strategies to improve your efficiency or do you wait until the penalties come down the pike and then everybody’s already jammed up and doesn’t really have enough time to, you know, to contend with with you because they’re busy, you know, So, you know, kind of like the, you know, it’s it’s some challenging times coming ahead. But New York’s in for a rude awakening Vancouver is to.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:12:40] What’s going on there?

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:12:41] Same, same type of initiative for Vancouver. And and I promise you, it’s coming to to a city near you. So, you know us in Dallas, you know, it’s it’s it’s coming to Dallas, too. I mean maybe later than than, you know, the others. But but it’s definitely coming. We need to be prepared for it.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:13:00] Oh, my goodness.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:13:01] I think I think at the end of the day, it’s really, really important to engage in the discussions, even if you’re not making a decision. I find that the I like the people in those industries and engage with them and start having those difficult discussions so that you can figure out what your pathway is forward.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:13:20] Right. You know, Ralph and I appreciate exactly what you just said, because the discussion on my end is talking to people around the world and we’re talking about the energy crisis. And that’s why when you and I were just chatting about this, very rarely does anybody talk about how do you save energy, how do you actually do that? And it’s kind of refreshing. And but, you know, I’m going to I’m going to put this as a T-shirt. I think you and I need to, like, get this T-shirt out.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:13:53] Because we need to collaborate together.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:13:56] Yeah, we got to get a T-shirt out there that says, Does my carbon footprint make my ass look big? Because I think we ought to do that.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:14:05] Well, I don’t tell you.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:14:06] Though. Don’t tell my wife, because you and I were chatting. You know, the worst words as a husband that you could ever say is you here. Does this dress make me look fat? And you go, you know, you’re you know, you’re getting me.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:14:23] So I can tell you that I, you know, that during those times, as well as when my wife figures out that I’m really hard of hearing, you know, And so I’m starting. Yeah, I’m here. And at that point in time and my attention span is shorter, so you get my drift.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:14:42] All right, Mr. Producer, I’d love for you to mark down time on this for our art department to come up with a t shirt that says, Does this carbon footprint make my ass look that big? That is a t shirt. I just made that up.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:15:00] That’s great. That’s a great concept that I’d wear. I’d wear it all the time, I promise.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:15:09] You know, there’s so much. I’m sitting here thinking about this. We could sit there and you could have somebody and have the shade off of their backside, you know? And yeah, I mean.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:15:20] I’m thinking you’ve already had these ideas.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:15:24] Brainstorming. Oh, I swear I haven’t. I swear. That’s why this is so funny is I can barely even keep myself. And speaking of the devil here, my wife. My wife is texting me on the phone, so I’m over here going.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:15:38] Yes, this. That’s so funny.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:15:42] That. Oh, no. But, you know, as we sit here and we talk about this, it’s getting the word out there and and really doing what you’re doing. I want to give you a shout out on what you’re doing on LinkedIn. And I like your posts. I like your inter activeness on there. And that’s what got us chit chatting. And you even poked fun at me a few times and I absolutely love it. I love anybody poking fun at me. I can’t remember which one it was, but it was like, you’re a dope or something. I can’t remember what it was absolutely a wonderful I was like, All right.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:16:20] You know, you got to be real, right? If you’re not authentic, then then what’s the purpose?

 

Stuart   Turley [00:16:25] Oh, yeah, but it helps. And I think that that’s part of society that we’re not doing right now. And that is humor is amazing. And I appreciate what you’re doing, trying to educate people out there because your posts are very, very good. So everybody needs to follow. Ralph Rodriguez l e d a p o m Now, what is that mean? Because I’m over here going, That’s a lot of initials behind your name there.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:16:57] Yeah, that’s the lead operations and management certification.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:17:02] Okay.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:17:03] From the from the Green Building Institute.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:17:06] Oh, nice.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:17:07] Yeah. So, so it’s just a certification for Leed, for Leed buildings. And, you know, there’s a lot of people that follow different frameworks. Okay. Would they try to use to, to, to improve operationally? And there’s, you know, sustainability initiatives and that’s one of them.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:17:25] I was I was hoping that that was some way to make a husband sounds, you know, listen to his wife a little more. But I’m glad it’s that it’s something.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:17:33] Like Yeah, but it’s not but but I’ll tell you what, it sure does make me feel important.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:17:41] I am so glad my wife is not standing over my shoulder and she has come up behind me and I’m like, All I can see is this hand come in from behind my head. Whack. Yeah.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:17:55] So I’m like, I can.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:17:57] Relax out of the city because this is a huge problem. Getting back to the the regulatory issues coming around the corner. I I’ve seen some horrific regulations coming around the corner and I applaud your comment. For our podcast listeners, when Ralph said that I my eyebrow my unibrow went up because I was absolutely like, wait a minute, if you don’t start tracking it now, what happens when the fines come in? Holy smokes, that’s frightening.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:18:33] Yeah. And you know, the truth is, is there then they’re no joke. I mean, these are significant fines. And I’ll tell you, I mean, right now, with this whole push on the green economy and the world’s, you know, up in arms, you know, they’re looking for capacity at these data center AI exploding.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:18:52] Right.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:18:53] The need for energy density is so critical. And and, you know, carbon and capital pretty much become inextricably linked. I mean, so so there’s really nothing that you can do to get away from that. So knowing that there’s a future day of reckoning, for lack of a better term, you know, it makes sense that you investigate the options available to you right before they literally cripple your business. You know, and and, you know, it’s it’s going to happen and there’s going to be winners and losers just like everything else. And I think the the the companies that are being proactive, that are focusing on on their sustainability initiatives and their carbon footprint is is critical. But but there’s one other issue, and that is, you know, that that the reporting frameworks out there, I mean, it’s like the Wild West out there, you know? Right. I mean, there’s a gazillion, you know, reporting frameworks. And so it it’s it’s like what, you know, what framework do I do You Well, you know what? That’s the beauty of our platform and how our platform works is we don’t really care. We’re word framework agnostic, you know, I like that, you know, so it just makes sense. And, and you just want to, you know, you want to start somewhere so many people are so hung up on what’s the upfront investment and they get bogged down with the fear that the numbers are astronomical without even jumping in and doing any of the research, you know, or investigating, you know, the opportunities with the top level advisors out there, you know? So that’s my take on that.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:20:38] Well, you know, I’m always looking at a return on investment. I get hit up so many times on even LinkedIn or anything else for people trying to sell things to my company. And and it’s just brutal. In fact, I had Joan Rivers, I think she came up from the dead the other day and it just adds. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. I saw.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:21:04] That. And I thought to myself, man, what is this world coming to?

 

Stuart   Turley [00:21:09] And I was like, And Steve Reese, I love Steve Reese. He’s a true industry leader out there. And he’s like, I believe it was him. And Marilyn Monroe had been chasing him for years. LinkedIn has got to get some better controls on these fake accounts coming in and somebody using I think.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:21:33] Right. There may be bots, you know, that are like I mean, it’s insane really. I mean, I can’t tell you how many that I get. I mean, it’s just crazy. But I’ve never gotten Joan Rivers, so I, I think that you’re winning. You’re taking the cake on this one.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:21:48] Oh, it was. It was funny. I had to bring my wife over and go, Hey, Joel, tomorrow, you know? And I really got tickled at that. Now back to a I. And when we sit here and think about A.I., it drives me nuts. Ralph, when I sit here and I know that I’ve used software packages, they they are going to remain nameless. But then all of a sudden, in the last six months to a year, they’ve gone. We’re a I know you’re not you’re a glorified spreadsheet, you know, And I’m over here going when it’s ready. You saying to your clients when they ask that kind of a thing. Right.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:22:30] Well, the thing is, is that, you know, the the the A.I. is really advancing the ability for these companies to really advance their techniques in a right substantive. And so I can see where those platforms are making progress and they’re using A.I. and but I think we’re just barely scratching the surface on it. You know, I mean, I think that the real learning and the real momentum of the A.I. programs is yet to come. The beauty is, is like, you know, with our labs and analytics platform, just, you know, the shameless plug again, is, is that we developed that platform over the last 6 or 7 years and some of the most tough environments that are out there.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:23:16] Right.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:23:17] And so, you know, we’ve been, you know, dealing with developing that technology and and now with, you know, with the push on AI, we’re on some iterations that are down the road already. So we you know, and it’s based on experience, right? I mean, the fact that we’re in you know, we’re in automobile manufacturing plants, we’re in poultry processing plants, we’re in, you know, mine the mining industry, as.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:23:47] You say, Holstein processing plants.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:23:50] No poultry.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:23:51] Whole poultry. Oh, I thought you were like, man.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:23:54] Like chicken processing plants. And and I mean, there’s we’ve got that’s cool interesting stories you know with with our platform and what that data does because when you can provide data to the people that are on the ground floor of those companies that are right, those are the people that understand their business better than anybody. Right? Isn’t that.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:24:14] Great?

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:24:15] So when they see the data, they can make adjustments that you wouldn’t I mean, we couldn’t have even anticipated some of the things that they came up with. And it was all based on the data that came through. And really, that’s all all because, you know, it’s teaching you how to think through these different scenarios and right now understand real time analytics and and apply, you know, make make those decisions that you make, you know, actionable and accountable.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:24:44] I like that. Actionable, accountable and auditable.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:24:49] It’s like a lot of like, it’s a lot of eyes.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:24:52] It is.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:24:53] That’s what my wife got me. That’s the front of the T-shirt. Yeah.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:24:57] Yeah. There you go. I’m sorry. That T-shirt is. I’ve just. You know, you should have mentioned t T-shirt again, because just like a squirrel Squirrel. I got another couple about four more T-shirts on this. We’re going to open up a merch shop. So because it came on this podcast, we’re going to have to cut you in on some of the merch sales that come out of this teacher or.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:25:19] You be an evangelist for I’ll be an evangelist for it, I promise you we’ll sell a bunch of them.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:25:26] That is a funny T-shirt line. I’m serious. That’s going to be part of the headline of this podcast. I love it. I think it should be. So what advice do you have for folks that are actually sitting here looking at a crisis? And let me let me back this up for just one other question here. Governor Holcomb just put out a notice two months ago saying that the New York is going to increase their power by 20% this year and then the bills are going to be increased 20% next year. And within 3 to 4 years, it’s going to go to 100% more than that. So not only is the car, the carbon footprint, does this carbon footprint make my butt look big? I’m sorry. I just got to get back there again. We’re going to have so much fun. And then when you take a look at the fact that that carbon footprint is going to make your butt look big, it’s also going to have a lot of your cost for the energy is coming up. We’re also having blackouts starting to roll through. So I’m asking this from a technical standpoint on as a grid operator, the grid operators have to keep up a balanced load and they have to have the balancing authorities throw it between, you know, the renewables, especially up in New York or those other areas. And they have to say, hey, I got a base load here. I got to have these things spinning up. At what level do the car plants or the other big plants that you have start communicating with the power grid, you know, going both ways and saying this is the load that I have now going this way to help those poor balancing authorities sit there and try to balance that out. Does that make sense? Because now we’re talking with a guy coming back and forth, preplanning. The load would make a big difference to that grid operator because now we’re sitting here and there are announcements all around the world. The UK this morning put out the get ready for gigantic amounts of power outages. Our grid facility in the U.S., the f e r c has already put out and said, oh, by the way, retro, we’re going to have blackouts because of the grid management and in hooking things to the grid that shouldn’t have. But would that be a great play for your software to in invest or a forward path? Because if you think about a plant and am I thinking about that right?

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:28:19] Yeah, you are. Because because here’s here’s the thing. Everything is advancing so fast in the industry. And particularly, you know, I know that we had a discussion previously about we’re involved in the datacenter space a lot, right? Granted, we did do podcast recently, give a shout out to the data center frontier and also at a center along with both of those too, where they had asked us to do a podcast and our CEO and founder Excuse you.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:28:48] Thank you.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:28:51] Now so, so, so you know, our our you know, those companies actually asked us to do the podcast, asked our CEO and founder to get on there and kind of right some of the difficulties from the constraint side and power, you know, stranded power, right cetera, etc.. And we’re getting I mean, we’re literally getting phone calls every day on I’m trying to improve and and collaborate. Yeah, well, stay ahead of the curve. And I think ultimately what you’re talking about is leveraging the technology in a way where where you can manage, you know, the energy dynamically. Right. What do you need to do to kind of control, you know, the different aspects, the infrastructure, you know, where are the you know, and then even even across grid, from grid to grid, you know, And so all those things are coming. And I think you now you’re starting to get the smartest people, you know, on the planet that understand energy way, way better than I do. They’re focused on trying to solve those pieces of the puzzle. But one element, it’s critical and it’s always going to be critical is real time energy analytics. And so if you’re not really understanding in granularity how you’re using that energy, you you’re not going to end in real time. You’re not going to be able to effectively, you know, provide the correct information that you need to become an active participate an active participant in the energy market.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:30:27] That’s nuts. I mean.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:30:28] That’s a big deal because at the end of the day, energy density is is king.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:30:34] Exactly.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:30:35] With all these energy intense businesses, you know, it’s just it’s critical. So people need to be focused on it.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:30:42] Yeah. I mean, Alex Epstein, who I’ve interviewed twice, he said there is no advanced country that didn’t get here without fossil fuels and energy density. You just nailed it there. And Germany, who is how the Germany goes in their economy, goes the EU, and they’re in trouble because of their energy density. They went to the wind and that natural gas they got into war over, you know, in the Nord Stream pipeline with Russia is now gone. BMW or Volkswagen shut their plant down. The oldest steel mill in Europe closed down. BASF has moved to China. They closed their fertilizer plants down. Countries die because of not having the energy density. So if you don’t understand, if you don’t understand the energy density, you’re going to die. I guess we can’t put the fear. That could be a T-shirt for your company, man.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:31:48] Like, we got all kinds of t shirts, like ideas come, and we’re going to be. We’re going to be t shirt, t shirt tycoon or, like, forget this energy stuff.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:31:58] Let’s Oh, yeah. You know, let’s get your CEO on here. And then that way we can you can get him on here for a fun podcast. We can’t let those data center guys get all the fun with your CEO. We got we’re going to be more fun than the CEO.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:32:15] Let’s do it. I mean, he’s he’s all over it. I mean, this you know, he’s he’s exceptional. I mean, really, he’s like next level of podcaster. I mean, if you ever watch any of the podcast that he’s done. His level of knowledge is is like exceptional. And he would have the foresight to be able to, like, know, hey, these are the things that are happening. These are the things that we got to do. He’s he’s all over it. So.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:32:40] Well, this would be fabulous. You know, you and I, this was almost a personal but it was a great energy discussion. And so we got about one more minute here. Ralph, what is coming around the corner for you? What do you see for Q4?

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:33:00] Oh, so right now, what’s what’s really ramping up is, is is, you know, the data center space, the commercial real estate space because of the local dollar 97. So, you know, smart metering is really important, but there’s a lot of out of the box, you know, solutions that that really are not going to solve people’s problem. So so it’s it’s tricky. You know, I mean, those shelf technologies, they really you know. They don’t operate as efficiently as they should. And so. So you really need somebody that’s like crossing over those silos that we were talking about, you know, so that they can integrate the strategy and help you really minimize your footprint. And that’s what we’re doing across the board. And that’s the beauty is, is we didn’t create a software for for four for one factory or or, you know, for a particular type of business, which a lot of these solutions, that’s what they do. Our solution literally works in every single category across every sector. And it’s really solving real world problems. And at the end of the day, that’s what matters.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:34:07] How cool is that? And people can find you on Ralph Rodriguez on LinkedIn. And we will have your contact information and your company’s Web site out there all in the show notes. And I can’t wait to visit with you and your CEO. I think that would be an absolute.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:34:26] And maybe some.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:34:28] Unless he watches this and he realizes he’s going to fire you and me for having such a great conversation.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:34:35] I’m not sure that it really matters because we’re going to be T-shirt tycoons who really matter. Man.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:34:42] Let’s go to rock n roll. So for that, we’ve been the energy news beat t shirt. And at least, Ralph, it’s not a wet T-shirt contest.

 

Ralph Rodriguez [00:34:54] No, I wouldn’t want to see mine. You do have the skinny filter on me right now.

 

Stuart   Turley [00:34:58] Oh, yeah, But you got the hair for all our podcast listeners. He has a great looking set of hair. I got flesh colored. I’m a little bit thin on the skin out there. So with that, thank you for stopping by The Energy News Beat podcast. My name’s do Turley and I will see you real soon. Thank you.

 

The post ENB #171 Ralph Rodriquez, Energy Ninja – A fun conversation about “Aligning Energy with Grid Capacity” appeared first on Energy News Beat.